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AEXLAB team launches VAIL VR, part of VR game engine for multiplayer games

Riley Kaminer
Riley Kaminer
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By Riley Kaminer

When the AEXLAB team set out to build its platform way back in 2017, they knew they did not simply want to develop a game. Rather, brothers Jonathan and Albert Ovadia wanted to build a VR game engine for multiplayer games – essentially a platform that could spawn multiple games.

The company has officially made one step closer to achieving this vision through the launch of their game VAIL VR game – first-person multiplayer shooter that costs $29.99 – on the Meta Quest store. 

“A lot of people from the outside might think, ‘Oh, wow, these guys took seven years to build this. That’s kind of crazy. Why?’” CEO Jonathan told Refresh Miami. “And if we just wanted to make one good game, we could have done it in three years. But the reason why it took seven years to build what we built is because what we really built isn’t just the game.”

Left to right, Jonathan and Albert Ovadia, co-founders of AEXLAB. At top of post, an AEXLAB team picture.

Much to the contrary, AEXLAB spent this time building out the rails to enable a top-tier gaming experience. This includes a relentless focus on the technical details that make or break the performance of a global multiplayer game: no to low latency, making sure all players are the same height, diverse maps, and more.

Seeing the potential of AEXLAB’s games and platform, Meta has been playing an active role in onboarding AEXLAB deep into its ecosystem. “They have been very involved, giving us hands-on support,” Jonathan said of his experience working with the Meta team.

“Launching on the Meta Quest App is an important milestone for the groundbreaking team at AEXLAB,” said Jeff Ransdell, founder and managing director of Fuel Venture Capital, one of AEXLAB’s main investors, said in a statement. “There’s nothing like VAIL VR out there on the market.”

For Jonathan, the time is now to build in VR. “The killer use case of today is gaming,” he said, noting that 78% of the top Meta Quest apps are gaming related. Jonathan expects that we’ll see a similar trajectory for Apple’s newly-released Vision Pro, and that ultimately we’ll see Meta and Apple become the two major competitors in the space.

“Half of the world’s population are gamers,” asserted Jonathan. “Gamers will do anything to improve their gaming experience. So gaming will continue to be the dominant VR category for the foreseeable future.”

In January 2023, AEXLAB raised a $10 million round led by Fuel Venture Capital with additional participation from Felix Hartmann of Hartmann Capital, developer Craig Robins from Dacra, and Antonio Gracias from Valor Equity Partners. This is in addition to their $5 million Series A in February 2022 and a $2.5 million crowdfund in the summer of 2021. The company currently has 30 employees, about half of whom are based in downtown Miami.

Within the next month or two, Jonathan signaled that we can expect to see another game release – this time, a battle royale format game: “There’s a lot more fun stuff coming now!”

You can watch the trailer for Vail VR here.

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